Page - 390 - in Die kaiserliche Gemäldegalerie in Wien und die Anfänge des öffentlichen Kunstmuseums - Europäische Museumskultur um 1800, Volume 2

390 Meijers From an International Perspective by the two railway lines, which by c. 1850 brought travellers from especially the southern part of the empire almost to the main entrance to the park and the gallery in the Oberes Belvedere.8 (Fig. 7) The encyclopedic museum in the Unteres Belvedere, which was situated on the Rennweg, was a particular attraction however. There the visitors would have seen Egyptian sculpture and other antiquities, suits of armour, ethnographic objects and curi- osities of all sorts, which had been gradually assembled – as the printed guide explained – since the former Schloss Ambras Kunstkammer had been installed there in 1814–16.9 They were interesting exhibits in themselves, but probably not what our British visitor had come to see, accustomed as he was to the collections of the British Museum. His destination would have been the gallery of paintings, which he would already have spotted at the top of the park, and whose opulence would not have disappointed him: the National Gallery in London (set up at great effort only a few decades before) bore no comparison with this collection.10 Changes in the perception of the gallery and the park since c. 1780 In a number of respects, it was still possible for visitors in 1855 to imagine how at the time of its reorganization in 1780 the Vienna gallery had been one of the most progressive gal- leries in Europe: quite apart from its overwhelming riches, clear, instructive classification and easy access it would still have been appealing, particularly in view of a number of modern features that had been introduced by 1855.11 Its location was a different story al- together, as was the museological context in which the gallery had ended up. In the 1770s, when the paintings were moved from the gloomy Hofburg development to the Bel- vedere country estate, they were also seen as having been ‘liberated’ from the curiosities which had previously formed part of the gallery. Their setting in the natural environment of the park and its surrounding countryside was thought ideal in that enlightened epoch: its praises were sung by Christian von Mechel who deemed it to be an ideal union be- tween art and nature: “Every window of this exquisite building reveals a delightful land- scape, a new nature painting to our gaze.”12 A royal or imperial gallery on a country estate – in the German-speaking territories this was a tradition which could be traced back to the beginning of the eighteenth century, when German sovereigns would, by preference, set up a gallery in or adjoining their sum- mer palaces. It belonged to the tradition of Schloss Salzdahlum between Wolfenbüttel and Braunschweig (1687–1715) or Schloss Schleißheim near Munich (c. 1715–26) and also to the first freestanding gallery in Potsdam near Berlin (1755–64).13 A stroll through the gar- den combined with the delights of art gave respite from the demands of court life in the city. Moving the Bildergalerie to the Belvedere towards 1780 to some extent fitted in with this trend, with the important difference that park and mansion had already lost their ori- ginal residential function and were now opened to a wider public, comprising artists, art- lovers and any interested citizens. By around 1855, however, the rustic setting had become unusual: in the eyes of our Englishman such a location among verdant greenery was an appropriate setting for a private nobleman, but not for the collection of a monarch. By that time, the rightful place for a public gallery was in, or near, the town centre. The vicinity of the encyclope- dic complex of cabinets in the Unteres Belvedere would probably have come across as even more singular.14 With its suits of armour, antiquities, ethnographic objects and other curiosities, these exhibits acted as a sort of introduction to the gallery of paintings from one end, or if you entered from the other end, they functioned as an unusual add- ed bonus. The gradual relocation of these collections to this site after 1814 had inevita- bly placed the picture gallery in a different context, which begs the question as to wheth- er the visitors of 1855 saw the paintings in a different light than those of 1780. In more